Documents / Official release
This is a case resolution from the Department of Defense's All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), dated 8 May 2023, about a 2021 report from military airspace in the Western United States. Military personnel saw five equidistant infrared lights flying at a fairly constant pace and thought they might be an incursion into restricted airspace. AARO and its partners concluded the objects were almost certainly commercial aircraft on established air routes up to 300 nautical miles from the sensor. The page was cleared as unclassified and released in full in February 2025.
UNCLASSIFIED All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office US Department of Defense Case: "Western United States" Case Resolution I 8 May 2023 (U) Key Findings (U) AARO assesses that the UAPs in this case were almost certainly commercial aircraft travelling on well-established air corridors as far as 300 nautical miles from the platform, based on a thorough review of the data by multiple analytical and scientific entities. • (U) Military personnel reported seeing five equidistant lights that they believed represented a potential incursion into restricted military airspace. • (U) AARO's Intelligence and Science and Technology (S&T) partners independently came to the same conclusion in accordance with AARO's analytic framework. • (U) The objects strongly correlated with specific commercial aircraft travelling on different air routes up to 300 nautical miles from the sensor. (U) Intelligence Assessment (U) Analysis of the objects' positions and acquisition of additional data led AARO to the conclusion that the objects were significantly farther from the platform than originally estimated by the observers. (U) Case Essentials (U) Military personnel reported this case due to the observed UAP presenting a potential incursion into restricted airspace. The UAP were described as equidistant lights that flew at a relatively constant pace (U) Location: Western United States military airspace (U) Date(s): 2021 (U) Altitude: Between 20,000 to 40,000 feet (U) Shape: Oblong dots/lights (U) Reporter: Military personnel (U) Sensor: Infrared (IR) (U) Behavior: Equidistant lights that flew at a relatively constant pace (U) Case Status: Resolved; the lights were aircraft up to 300NM away from the sensor 1 UNCLASSIFIED 020 Page determined to be Unclassified Reviewed by Chief of Staff, AARO IAW FY24 NDAA, Section 1841 (a)(1)(C) Date: 02/06/2025 All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office Chief of Staff, AARO Authority: FY24 NDAA, now codified at 44 U.S.C. 2107 Date: 2/6/2025 Released in Full: X Case Number: 330UAP000020
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Official release, from the nara collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 2 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.